Today, visitors to the Rising Sun Countryside Centre in Rising Sun Country Park can still see several buildings that once formed part of Scaffold Hill Hospital. For more than 80 years, the hospital served local communities, first as an isolation hospital for infectious diseases and later as a hospital for older people. Although the hospital closed in 1986, its history can still be traced through the surviving buildings and the memories shared by former patients, their families and the staff who worked there.
The hospital's origins date back to 1903, when a temporary isolation hospital was established at Scaffold Hill. Growing demand soon led to the construction of a permanent hospital complex, beginning with a Nurses' Home in 1913 and the first permanent isolation ward in 1914.
Over the following decades the site expanded to include additional wards, a laundry, discharge block and other support buildings. By the late 1920s it provided accommodation for up to 72 patients and served the areas of Seghill, Earsdon, Whitley and Monkseaton, together with Tynemouth Rural District. Its catchment later expanded to include Cramlington Urban District.
Advances in vaccination, antibiotics and public health gradually reduced the need for isolation hospitals. As demand for infectious disease treatment declined, the hospital increasingly cared for older people. Although requests to change the hospital's name from Scaffold Hill Hospital to Holystone Hospital had been made as early as 1958 because of the association of the word "scaffold" with public execution, the change was not approved until 1971. The hospital, by then primarily serving older patients, closed in 1986.
Following closure, the site was acquired by North Tyneside Council and adapted for use as part of Rising Sun Country Park. Today, many of the former hospital buildings survive and remain an important part of the park's heritage.